It is better to have tried, and failed, then never to have tried at all

Blogging Blue | If citizens carrying guns help prevent crime, what happened in Las Vegas?:
(June 10, 2014)

One of the most common talking points I’ve seen and heard from conservatives who support concealed carry laws is that allowing citizens to “pack heat” will serve as both a deterrent and a means for citizens to “fight crime” on their own, but it seems pretty clear that wasn’t the case in Las Vegas. While many conservatives (fueled no doubt by the radical National Rifle Association) seem to feel we need to arm the citizenry with more guns, it would certainly seem to me that’s not the solution, given how the number of mass shootings that have plagued our nation.

Police who are killed while trying to stop murderers are lauded as "hero", even by the Left.
Well, that's the job of police: "To Protect And to Serve".

But when a civilian, who carries a firearm, accepts as his duty to his fellow citizens to stop murderers?   He is mocked as (supposedly) incompetent, inept.  His moral flaw is assuming that he can make a difference.  His actions are dismissed, and counted "fueled ... by the radical National Rifle Association".  Not the actions of a hero at all; merely a misguided buffoon who should be held in contempt.

The private citizen, Joseph Robert Wilcox. was not a buffoon.  He was ambushed by the murderers as surely as were LVPD officers Alyn Beck and Igor Soldo, he was taken by surprise and murdered even as he tried to keep armed people from killing innocents.  Wilcox was probably unaware of the killing of the two LVPD officers, but he saw his duty and he did his best to follow his conscience.  He did so suspecting he was risking his life, and he paid the ultimate price.

I give you The Montrose Quote:

He either fears his fate too much, 

Or his deserts are small,  

That dares not put it to the touch, 

To gain or lose it all. 

Had Wilcox been aware of the details of the previous killings, he might have realized that there were TWO shooters ... and he might have been realized that there was a second shooter on the scene ... one of them behind him.

There are two kinds of people who react to violence:  those who run away, and those who go to the sound of the guns.

Joseph Robert Wilcox was the second kind of person.  Regardless of the outcome, his attempt to serve his community should be hailed as the act of a hero.

It is better to have tried, and failed, then never to have tried at all.



The author -- Zach Wisniewski -- of this Blogging Blue ("Blogging Liberally in the Badger State") op-ed article was not there in Las Vegas.  He can't possible know enough about the actions and intentions of Mr. Wilcox to criticize him.

All we know about this puling pup Wisniewski is the he seems to feel invested with the right to criticize the actions of men who are better than him.

Well, that, and that he would run away like a craven coward.